Madhya Pradesh government officially blames ‘ghosts’ for suicides of farmers

Madhya Pradesh government officially blames ‘ghosts’ for suicides of farmers

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh government has officially blamed ‘ghosts’ for suicides of some of the 418 farmers in Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's home district Sehore in the last three years. MP home minister

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh government has officially blamed ‘ghosts’ for suicides of some of the 418 farmers in Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's home district Sehore in the last three years.

MP home minister Bhupendra Singh, in response to a question on suicides at Sehore district, said many of the deaths were because of ghosts.

He also informed the assembly that there were 418 suicides in the last two and a half years in Sehore.

Congress lawmaker Shailandra Patel who had asked for the statistics, said he was stunned that the minister had attributed some of the deaths to "bhoot, pret, upari saaya (ghosts)," NDTV reported.

"The reason for some of the deaths is bizarre. The home minister has replied that some died because of ghosts and black magic. When I counter-questioned him on whether the state government believes in superstition...he was silent in the house," Patel said.

When the state government was ridiculed for its reply, home minister defended himself by saying, “The state government has not said that people have died due to ghosts. When a person dies, the statements of family of the deceased are recorded and whatever they have stated, we have just repeated that in our reply. The state government doesn't believe in such superstition."

“Family members of the farmer Hariom Parmar who was my acquaintance and who committed suicide told me that he took the extreme step due to the financial distress after a crop failure,” Patel claimed.